no worries HC, the deadline was pushed to the28th due to some confusion. In fact your entry is greatly welcomed because it makes the grand total exactly 50 games! Unless, of course, somebody pops up before midnight.

I'm gonna go ahead and assume everyone has posted their entry.. so I'm going to start on the lsit update now

Before I speak, I'd like to thank a few people for making the contest possible:

Mlk: For hosting previous contests and expending a great deal of time and energy in bootstraping the contest.

Woogley: For his hard work in collecting and organizing the entries.

ChrisM, Blah3h, SWPalmer: For agreeing to be our judges.

Will everyone stand up and give them a round of applause? We couldn't have done this without you guys!

(Did I forget anyone? )

Now, on to business. I'd like to go over the rules I presented and explain why I balanced them as I did. I'm hoping that will help everyone come to an agreement on what the rules should be:

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1. Graphics (points: 0-10) 2. Gameplay (points: 0-10)

The two most important features of any game are how great it looks on the screen (which directly affects how immersive it is) and how much fun it is to play. These two are core to what gaming is, and thus were given very large scales.

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3. Sound (points: 0-5)

While sound is integral to most games today, it is unfortunately very difficult to add any worthwhile sounds to a game that fits in 4K. Even simply generating a bleep or bloop eats up a great deal of space from all the necessary class references. As a result, I feel that acheiving sound is an accomplishment that should be recognized and awarded.

However, the recognition should be proportional to the impressiveness of the accomplishment. It would be somewhat unfair to award a high point value for a game that produces a very poor excuse for game sounds. Thus the scale was set to 0-5. Keep in mind that what qualifies as a 5 for sound will probably take a lot away from the gameplay and graphics, so it is fair to give a very heavy weighting to this.

It is, of course, up to the judges to decide what is impressive and what isn't.

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4. Self Executing [i.e. java -jar] (points: 0 or 1)

I am honestly horrified by the number of entries that were not self-executable. Part of any good game is professional style and delivery. Yet we are dealing with very tight space restrictions, so requiring a bit more work from the user is forgivable. Still, the professionalism in making a game accessable is something that should be recognized, even if it has a low impact on the overall score.

Note that this score is intended to include both executable JAR files and webstart programs. The difference between these two is fairly minor for a contest like this, and favoring one over the other is (IMHO) a mistake. Allow the programmer to choose which method works for him.

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5. Music (points: 0 or 5)

Like pixmaps, music tends to eat up a lot of data file space in addition to the space eaten up by class references. Any game that includes music is bound to lose out in the areas of graphics and gameplay. (As I think a particular entry demonstrates.) Yet because of the difficulty of accomplishing this feat, it should be strongly recognized, and the score should help even out the loses accepted in graphics and gameplay. It is, again, up to each judge to decide what qualifies as "music" and what is merely noise or sound effects.

In short, I balanced the scoring to reflect the give and take inherent in writing a game for a contest such as this. No one category is sufficient to offset what others might do in another category. Thus each programmer may strive for his strengths and allow the chips to fall as they may (hopefully in his favor ;-)).

One last point I'd like to make. I believe that the judges should have the discretion of adding *small* bonuses and demerits to each games. For example, some people are impressed by 3D coding. If a judge feels it worthwhile, he could tag on a +1 3D. Or (if he's like me) he might find professional documentation to be of high importance to the overall experience and thus give a +1 bonus for that.

On the other hand, a judge may find that a given game often locks up due to bugs and give a -1 for that. Or perhaps he finds that a game runs well only on particular versions of an OS and gives a -1 for that.

My only caution on this is to encourage the judges to be reasonable and not get too wild with bonuses and demerits. Try to keep the perspective of a professional game in mind. e.g. This game might not run on Linux, or this one might not run on the Mac. Yet this is common in the gaming industry and probably shouldn't be punished. OTOH, full cross platform support is rare in the industry and is often lauded as a Good Feature (TM). Thus giving a bonus for a fully cross platform game would not be out of character.

I'd like to let everyone know that it was a joy to help the 4K contest along, and I appreciate the anonymous $200 donation.. whoever donated.

The rules jbanes proposed seem fair. I would like to remind the judges, that at least for this year's contest.. a signed webstart JAR that exceeds the 4K limit is forgivable ONLY if their is an unsigned alternative to the game. Next year we will have to edit the rules on this as it seems to be somewhat of a roadblock.

From now on I plan on hosting the contests the right way- not a silly table of games done at the last minute. See my sig for a slight peek at what I'm cooking up in my kitchen.

The final game list update will be posted at midnight tonight. The judges will start judging tomorrow, and it's fair to give them a week, so I ask that I receive the results from the judges themselves via PM by March 8th. It seems the judges have a long, 50-game road to travel this week! Take your week's time, judges! I dont advise you judge all 50 at the same time

Good luck to all entrants!

edit:Okay, seriously this time, the deadline has expired! The J4K 2004-2005 contest ended up with 50 games, as I said earlier. The Games List has been updated accordingly. Enjoy!

I am honestly horrified by the number of entries that were not self-executable. Part of any good game is professional style and delivery. Yet we are dealing with very tight space restrictions, so requiring a bit more work from the user is forgivable. Still, the professionalism in making a game accessable is something that should be recognized, even if it has a low impact on the overall score.

I'm not sure I think ease of starting the game should affect the scoring at all, since that's one of the few things the original rules were clear about:

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The presentation (jar, class, or other) does not matter, as long as the code can be directly run from the shell.

I'm not sure I think ease of starting the game should affect the scoring at all, since that's one of the few things the original rules were clear about:

I'm with JBanes.

I did not play several of the games because I didn't feel like extracting the zips and locating command.com (or run: cmd and cd-ing over to the correct directory). It's too much work for a game I'll play at the most a few times.

Click and run (executable jar) or webstart please.

It's time to prove to your friends that your worth a damn. Sometimes that means dying; sometimes that means killing a whole lotta people.

I think you are refering to rules to be accepted as a contribution. You dont have to have sound in the game to get it accepted, but you will score higher with it, just as executable jar should give you higher score. I personally think that is fair, and it is only one point I guess. Hope I didn't step on any toes.

One last point I'd like to make. I believe that the judges should have the discretion of adding *small* bonuses and demerits to each games. For example, some people are impressed by 3D coding. If a judge feels it worthwhile, he could tag on a +1 3D. Or (if he's like me) he might find professional documentation to be of high importance to the overall experience and thus give a +1 bonus for that.

On the other hand, a judge may find that a given game often locks up due to bugs and give a -1 for that. Or perhaps he finds that a game runs well only on particular versions of an OS and gives a -1 for that.

My only caution on this is to encourage the judges to be reasonable and not get too wild with bonuses and demerits. Try to keep the perspective of a professional game in mind. e.g. This game might not run on Linux, or this one might not run on the Mac. Yet this is common in the gaming industry and probably shouldn't be punished. OTOH, full cross platform support is rare in the industry and is often lauded as a Good Feature (TM). Thus giving a bonus for a fully cross platform game would not be out of character.

That's pretty much it. Good luck to all the entrants! :-)

I think the judges should be limited to a single bonus or demeret per game. This way they cannot go wild with bonus/demeret points, but can still give recognition.

That's true. We're just going to have to let it slide. If I did a rule change.. I would have to e-mail each participant and give them another week or so to make corrections with their game. This is one of those glitches that are only fixed after you've SEEN the problem. We'll just set some tighter rules next year. Until then, use good ol' command prompt!

The presentation (jar, class, or other) does not matter, as long as the code can be directly run from the shell.

That depends on ones interpretation of the sentence.

I take "does not matter" to mean that it won't exclude your game from entering. Using the sound analogy, it does not matter if your game does not have sound, you can still enter. Games with sound however score points for having it since it adds to the game and may reduce their capacity to earn points in other areas (due to the cost). Otherwise, nobody would use sound. Likewise with executable .jar's. What's the point of throwing away 300 valuable bytes for nothing?

As self-executing .jars are much easier to run than via the shell, and since the manifest is quite costly, they should deserve some bonus points. Since people are using JNLP files and not counting the bytes for those, why should people using manifest.mf files have to count the bytes not get anything back?

Additionally, the judging guideline proposed in January included a bonus for self-executing .jars. Markus_Persson, you recently objected to the judging rule changes which did not suite you. Well, I think those of us with self-executing .jars would object to this judging rule change, as it does not suite us. The sword cuts both ways my friend.

As I said, I'm fine if people with easy-to-launch games get a bonus point. (Heck, Dungeon4k has a nice jnlp link, so it'd get a bonus point for free)

I just want us to agree on the rules BEFORE the contest ends the next time around.

I agree that the rules should be sorted out before hand. To late for that now though.

Regarding the JNLP link, do you count the JNLP file in your 4096 bytes? If not, why should you get a bonus?

Look at it this way, you have an extra 300 bytes by not including a manifest.mf file. So your reward is the 300 bytes which you can use to better your graphics or gameplay, my reward is bonus points for making an easy to execute, fully self-contained program.

Ok, since I want the judging to go as efficiently as possible, can someone (woogley) validate that all the entries meet the 4k requirement and any other rules that might disqualify them. I doubt there are any but there are things written above like

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I also think the version that the judges run (and judge) should be the 4k version.

I don't mind overhead for signing, but I don't think each judge should have to double check that there is an unsigned jar that is 4k or under etc.

I also agree that since the rules stated that launching method was fairly open that it should be worth at the very most 1 point. Is there ANY entry that couldn't be made to run with WebStart? Quite frankly I was hoping that all of them would be set up to run with webstart, regardless of wether the contestant provided a JNLP file, just to make the judging go smoother

I also think that there should be an automatic deduction for each OS out of the major 3 (Linux, Mac, Windows) that the game does not run on. By 'run' I mean the game must launch and be functional, if there are graphics or sound glitches specific to an OS that is forgivable. But if the game just crashes that's -1 .

10 points for Graphics 10 points for Game Play5 points for sound effects5 points for music1 point for simple launch (webstart or java -jar X)

Let's say that we add another 4 points at the judges descretion for just 'coolness' factors and enjoyability.That would make each game out of a total of 35 possible points.I assume that the scores from each judge will be added together to form the total score for that game, and the game with the highest total wins first place...

So a perfect score from all three judges would give 105 points and it's all down hill from there

Let's say that we add another 4 points at the judges descretion for just 'coolness' factors and enjoyability.

Those are really covered by the first two categories. However, I have no objection to providing bonus points for special/cool features as long as those points aren't excessive.

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Anyone want to make a spreadsheet for this that the judges can share?

I've already sent one to the other two judges, but I didn't have your email address. Shoot me an email and I'll forward it to you. :-)

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I also think that there should be an automatic deduction for each OS out of the major 3 (Linux, Mac, Windows) that the game does not run on. By 'run' I mean the game must launch and be functional, if there are graphics or sound glitches specific to an OS that is forgivable. But if the game just crashes that's -1 .

FWIW, this *is* a 4 Kilobyte contest. With issues like slow performance and no fullscreen support on non-windows platforms, I can't fault anyone for excluding a non-windows platform. For example, my entry works great on both Macs and Windows. Despite the "stratch an itch advantage" that Linux supposedly has, it won't run full-screen exclusive code. Similarly, other games have crash problems on Macs because of poor graphical performance. The authors shouldn't be punished for this, rather the JVM vendors who need to fix the issues. :-(

Personally I think a point should be awarded for self executing .jars because it cuts into the 4k limit, but not webstart since it is not included in the limit. On page 13 of this thread, I outlined my reasons for this.

I definitally think there should be an incentive to provide support for the three major platforms, it is a Java contest after all. Bonus points that are at the judges descresion are an excellent idea, this way cool features don't go unrewarded simply because they don't fit into a predefined category.

Deadline:IMO the deadline should be the end of the 1st of March, the world over.

$200?!:Your joking? Ace! I had planned on picking up a teddy bear with a J4K-type logo from cafepress, but alas I've had a large bill come in at the last moment (I've had to fly off to Greece and rescue my g/f). Personally I don't feel the prize should be particularly big for such a small compo. Anything too big, and you take away from the small-friendliness of it.The D$s, anyone wanting 'em, post in the J4K thread at java.com. All my D$ MUST GO!, so if you don't post by the 8th, they will be distributed to people that do post.

java -jar/jnlp or zip file+bat/shIMO it should not matter (other than the 1 point for jar -jar or a .jnlp file that fits in the 4k). The fact that spectators will not run a zip should be off-putting enough to stop contestants from doing so.

I'd like to thank Woogly, jbanes, the Judges ( swpalmer, ChrisM and blahblahblahh), codymanix (for not complaining about me running way with his idea) and *sob everyone else that *sob* made this *sob* happen

Not joking.. someone (I have my ideas who it is..) donated to me $200 for the site work I did. The site is nothing worthy of $200, but I gladly take any donations heh. That's what gave me the incentive to go ahead and do a full site on it.

edit: about the thing swpalmer is talking about not wanting to double-check if their are unsigned jars that meet the 4k... it won't be me checking. I've done alot already, as people have nicely shown gratitude for, I think the judges should be able to handle a little side work of checking the unsigned jars.. I think there's only maybe 4 games that have this problem. This will need to be addressed in next year's rules.

Anyway, unless someone wants to go ahead and verify that all JARs are indeed legit.. judges will have to do a few extra link clicking.. :-/

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